Our culture works against anyone having a deep understanding of suffering. We only want to get through it as soon as possible, or else we obsess with the theological problem of how to reconcile the suffering of innocents with the idea of a loving God. As a result of our narrowing our response to suffering to these two choices, we miss out on seeing just how central to our understanding of grace is our ability to experience limitations. Life without limitations--without death and suffering--is life without grace. There is, in short, no way to measure the value of our lives without the experience of them as a temporary gift.
I have been wanting to read The Diary of a Country Priest for years. But I had no idea how beautiful this book was until I finished it. This is one of the most poignant portraits of a limited human being who is beautiful in that limitation, and through it. I wish that reviewers had never used the word "luminous" to describe prose so that I could save it for this description. Passages of this book are luminous. Read it; cherish it.
Sunday, July 13, 2008
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Persons are more than their properties
I just finished Robert Spaemann's wonderful book: Persons: the difference between someone and something. It is a difficult read, but worth it, as his argument that persons are constituted by their membership in humanity is one of the best answers I can find to the arguments of utilitarians such as Peter Singer. There is a lot at stake here, but my favorite part of the book was the last chapter, when he explained how the severely disabled give more to human society than they require from it. They do this by being an "acid test" for our humanity--they force society to think of persons as more than the sum total of their properties.
“In fact, however, they give more than they get. They receive help at the level of sustaining life. But for the hale and hearty portion of mankind giving this help is of fundamental importance. It brings to light the deepest meaning of a community of persons. Love or recognition directed to a human being is not, as we have seen, directed merely to personal properties, though it is the personal properties that allow us to grasp that a person is there. Friendship and erotic love develop mainly in response to the beloved’s individual personal properties. A disabled person may lack such properties, and it is by lacking them that they constitute the paradigm for a human community of recognizing selves, rather than simply valuing useful or attractive properties. They evoke the best in human beings; they evoke the true ground of human self-respect. So what they give to humanity in this way by the demands they make upon it is more than what they receive.” (244)
“In fact, however, they give more than they get. They receive help at the level of sustaining life. But for the hale and hearty portion of mankind giving this help is of fundamental importance. It brings to light the deepest meaning of a community of persons. Love or recognition directed to a human being is not, as we have seen, directed merely to personal properties, though it is the personal properties that allow us to grasp that a person is there. Friendship and erotic love develop mainly in response to the beloved’s individual personal properties. A disabled person may lack such properties, and it is by lacking them that they constitute the paradigm for a human community of recognizing selves, rather than simply valuing useful or attractive properties. They evoke the best in human beings; they evoke the true ground of human self-respect. So what they give to humanity in this way by the demands they make upon it is more than what they receive.” (244)
Friday, December 21, 2007
Ethics in action
This book is more fluff than serious engagement, but it is high concept. What can be more difficult than being a daughter that you know was brought into existence to be a potential donor/life-saver for your sister? I wish Jodi Picoult was able to frame the ethical questions in more interesting ways, but still, the story is a powerful one, and will get readers to stop and think about seeing life from a utilitarian perspective.
Monday, November 19, 2007
Amazon Black Friday!
I know where I'll be shopping on Friday after Thanksgiving! Forget the mall; amazon is having specials all day. Click the link above to join in!
Thursday, August 09, 2007
Love for the future is self-love
It would be difficult to find a writer who more cleanly hits the nail on the head of the truth than Wendell Berry. His essay "Standing by Words" may be one of the best attacks against the excesses of the contemporary love for technological progress that I have ever seen. Berry explains that the disintegration of language and the disintegration of persons and communities go hand in hand. Precision in language forces a kind of responsibility to that which is external to us. Precision in language forces us to go beyond the fantasies inside our mind and into the realm of things.
I'm skipping through a lot here, but what interests me is that Berry illustrates clearly how people who dream about the future and how everything will be fixed by technology are not really loving other people. Love cannot be abstract, but must be for particular people and creatures. So love for the future is self love. Listen to the wisdom here:
“Desire for the future produces words that cannot be stood by. But love makes language exact, because one loves only what one knows. One cannot love the future or anything in it, for nothing is known there. And one cannot unselfishly make a future for someone else. Love for the future is self-love—love for the present self, projected and magnified into the future, and it is an irremediable loneliness.”
Wendell Berry is one of this country's best essayists. Buy this book and read it all. You will not be sorry.
I'm skipping through a lot here, but what interests me is that Berry illustrates clearly how people who dream about the future and how everything will be fixed by technology are not really loving other people. Love cannot be abstract, but must be for particular people and creatures. So love for the future is self love. Listen to the wisdom here:
“Desire for the future produces words that cannot be stood by. But love makes language exact, because one loves only what one knows. One cannot love the future or anything in it, for nothing is known there. And one cannot unselfishly make a future for someone else. Love for the future is self-love—love for the present self, projected and magnified into the future, and it is an irremediable loneliness.”
Wendell Berry is one of this country's best essayists. Buy this book and read it all. You will not be sorry.
Tuesday, June 05, 2007
Brilliant satire
I've been reading George Saunders' collection of short stories called In Persuasion Nation. Wow. Let me just say how grateful I am that a former student of mine introduced me to Saunders by recommending the lead story in this collection, "I Can Speak!" I don't think I've ever read anything quite as original (as far as short stories go) as these stories. Please read them for yourself.
Why? Because it is nearly impossible to simply describe these stories. They combine the critique of Don DeLillo with the moral heart of Andre Dubus. There is one story called "brad carrigan, american" that moves seamlessly from tv simulacra to American life, and ends up critiquing both for their utter soulessness. When a tv show begins to develop a real conscience, it has to be eliminated. Another moving story, "Jon" is set sometime in some possible future, in which certain unwanted children are made into conduits for advertisements; the brilliance of the story is that the children have no language for anything other than that language and those images that have been supplied to them by commericials. The result is a hilarious but utterly moving look at how dehumanizing that can be. I cannot describe these stories. Buy them, read them, enjoy.
Why? Because it is nearly impossible to simply describe these stories. They combine the critique of Don DeLillo with the moral heart of Andre Dubus. There is one story called "brad carrigan, american" that moves seamlessly from tv simulacra to American life, and ends up critiquing both for their utter soulessness. When a tv show begins to develop a real conscience, it has to be eliminated. Another moving story, "Jon" is set sometime in some possible future, in which certain unwanted children are made into conduits for advertisements; the brilliance of the story is that the children have no language for anything other than that language and those images that have been supplied to them by commericials. The result is a hilarious but utterly moving look at how dehumanizing that can be. I cannot describe these stories. Buy them, read them, enjoy.
Sunday, March 18, 2007
The Children of Men
I had the interesting experience of reading P.D. James's novel The Children of Men at the same time as I was reading Peter Singer's book Writings on an Ethical Life. Singer justifes infanticide with breathtaking ease, arguing that infants are "replaceable." I don't want to be unfair to his position; it is not as if he thinks it is simply ok to go around killing babies. But he is clear: if you do not want to care for a Down's syndrome child (because it will take away some of your happiness) it is ok in his ethical view to abort that child or to euthanize him. Then, just go on ahead and have the "normal" child you prefer to have. It is a replacement for the other.
Infants are not replaceable. In James's novel, she puts some pressure on Singer's position by imagining a world in which suddenly, inexplicably, humans are unable to have babies. The year of the last child is named "Omega." 25 years go by; soon humanity gives up hope on life. The novel makes you think again, and not at all sentimentally, about how precious human life really is. We simply take fertility for granted. The protagonist in the novel, Theo, learns to come outside of himself to fight for others. It is this kind of change in our way of thinking about others that will save us. Children are not primarily for our happiness (though certainly they give joy). They are the gift of God because life itself, in all its variety, is the gift of God.
Infants are not replaceable. In James's novel, she puts some pressure on Singer's position by imagining a world in which suddenly, inexplicably, humans are unable to have babies. The year of the last child is named "Omega." 25 years go by; soon humanity gives up hope on life. The novel makes you think again, and not at all sentimentally, about how precious human life really is. We simply take fertility for granted. The protagonist in the novel, Theo, learns to come outside of himself to fight for others. It is this kind of change in our way of thinking about others that will save us. Children are not primarily for our happiness (though certainly they give joy). They are the gift of God because life itself, in all its variety, is the gift of God.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
